This is Adelaide… with Bruce Pascoe
This black-and-white portrait of Aboriginal farmer and writer Bruce Pascoe, known for his groundbreaking 2014 book Dark Emu, was taken in Bowden two years ago.
Bruce Pascoe is an Aboriginal farmer, writer, researcher and educator, with Aboriginal ancestry from Tasmania and the Boonwurrung clan of the Kulin Nation on the western side of Port Phillip Bay in Victoria.
He is an Honorary Enterprise Professor at the University of Melbourne’s School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences and is best-known for his 2014 monograph Dark Emu, which won the NSW Premier’s Award for Literature in 2016.
The groundbreaking history and anthropology book challenged Western stereotypes about Aboriginal cultures, including the misconception that Aboriginal people were hunter-gatherers with no experience in farming practices.
“He’s a divisive character, some claiming he is a great writer, others claiming he’s a teller of tall tales and questions around his Aboriginality have swirled around for years,” says photographer Alex Frayne, who took the photo of Bruce at Plant4 Bowden two years ago.
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Bruce’s forthcoming book, The European Mind, will be released in September and promises to be “a global examination of Western power informed by a First Nations perspective”, delving into topics such as Christianity, capitalism, and colonialism, as well as how colonial history impacts our current world.
Alex says the photo of Bruce was taken at the 2023 Nature Festival in Adelaide, where he gave a talk at Plant4 Bowden, hosted by Costa Georgiadis. The discussion was around First Nations food production.
The photo was made on Kodak TriX 120 film that Alex hand-developed and was shot on a Hasselblad 501c medium format film camera.
Alex Frayne is an Adelaide-based photographic artist and regular contributor to InDaily.
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